Tokyo Twilight Ghost Hunters Daybreak Special Gigs - PS4

This is the updated PS4 version of Tokyo Twilight Ghost Hunters that came out on PS3 and Vita. The PS4 version has some extra scenarios and improvements to battles.

It's a Japanese visual novel x SRPG so naturally you play as a high school student. You join an underground group that exorcises ghost for clients. The game is split between 3 main parts, visual novel story sections, character management in the Gate Keepers office and an abstracted SRPG to hunt the ghosts.

The visual novel sections are linear but when you make a choice you select options from two wheels. The first wheel determines your emotion (friendly, angry, sad, etc) and the second wheel determines how you express it (hand, mouth, eye, etc). So you might choose anger and fist and the character you're speaking to will react as if you've made a fist in anger at something they've said. What's slightly annoying is that they'll ask you how you feel about helping them out with something and you'll choose friendship and mouth to show that you agree or you're with them in the coming battle or whatevs but the character always seems to interpret it as you trying to tongue them and react in disgust.

The ghost hunting crew you're part of is called the Gate Keepers and after school you hang out in their office. From there you can equip items, go to the store to buy new gear, play a board game with other ghost hunters, train with them, read some lore and accept side missions. I think training with them is part of unlocking the different character endings but I'm just playing without caring which waifu or husbando likes me the best.

The way you accept side quests is quite cool. On the surface, Gate Keepers is a magazine that focuses on the occult but secretly they hunt ghosts. If you browse their in game web site you can look at articles etc but there is a way to view the secret part of the site which is where people request their services. Making it slightly secret is a neat little touch.

The battles are where people might be put off. The battle view is a turn based abstracted icon and grid based system. You place traps, chase the ghost ad then hit it to deal damage and exorcise it. Unfortunately the ghosts spawn in random places with a fog of war so it's hard to pin them down. Until you know what you're looking at, they behave seemingly randomly in combat as well, moving all over the place and running rings round you.

In order to combat the ghosts effectively you want to place traps before hand. Salt blocks a square off, preventing a ghost from moving there, emf scanners detect ghosts, heart sutras damage them etc. Before you enter the battle you need to look at the possible ghost spawn points and work out how to place your salt to confine them to a small area of the map and where your locators are going to be most effective.

When you engage them in a fight the ghosts have a very small scream icon that shows you what the ghost is likely to do in their next turn. Blue means they'll flee, red means they'll move straight to wards you and attack and I think green means they're going to flank (not sure on the green). Once you get used to placing the traps and understanding ghost behaviour the battles are short and good fun.

Once you get access to the side missions and training, do a load of them to level up (place more traps and get more AP to do more per turn) and you'll begin to understand the battles and start having fun.

I love this game. The music is great, it looks amazing and it does a great job of capturing the spirit of ghost busting. That's one of the keys to getting on with the battle system, you are not a military general like in Fire Emblem, you're a bunch of teenagers hunting malevolent spirits. Once that clicked with me, I really got into the feeling of being a group of amateur ghost busters.

I can recommend this if you liked the Persona 4 crew and if you're happy to have something that combines a visual novel with a light battle system but has loads of style. Again, it looks and sounds fantastic. It's also full of references to stuff like the X Files and Dan Aykroyd's crystal skull vodka. The game is packed full of things to do and options to customise your load out, skills and battles. I'd prefer this on a handheld (the updated version only got released on the Vita in Japan I think) but I'm having some great evenings with some beers and this crew of ghost hunters.